Ashes, Ashes
by Valieara
Summary: We all fall down. A CSM fic set in seasons eight and nine featuring Scully and William, among others.


**Disclaimer:** I own nothing.

**Spoilers/Season:** Seasons eight and nine; spoilers for _The Truth_ only in setting and a certain smoking man being alive.

**Notes:** They gave us no answers, so we spawned no lies. All theories herewithin are incredibly vague.

* * *

He supposes it's nice, in a way, that she considers this to be Mulder's child. Sentimental. 

He would nearly say it showed an assurance in her convictions, but that had never described Dana Scully in any matter, excluding her faith – and not even necessarily in that area. She had always been a contradiction of faiths and character, and time wasn't likely to resolve such intangible truths, irrevocably tangled and complex as they may be.

But here he is, a dead man, alone, and subjecting the dead air to his philosophical ramblings. He lights a cigarette, puts it to his neck.

Here he is, a dead man, and she bursts with life. It seems unfair.

In a way.

In his own way, he doesn't mind. There's no point in currying malice or malcontent, not here, nor even in civilization itself, where emotion had ruined many a great man's dreams, many a brilliant man's schemes. There isn't a point to much of anything, any longer, if he's honest; with nothing but the ghosts of a dead civilization to listen to him, joining the ghosts of the living, and soon-to-be dead. It seems a pity, but a penance he could certainly bring himself to bear.

Emotion had ruined many a great man's schemes.

Inside the pueblos, the smoke rises, takes form, and ignores him. He supposes he shouldn't expect anything less. He exhales, in something like defiance. The smoke ripples, clots, and drifts. He raises an eyebrow, in something that was not expectancy.

It's too late for apprehension, after all.

Cassandra whispers a scream in his ear, that might have been on words or not. He'll never know, staring straight ahead, watching the stiff breeze brush grains of sand up, around, over. Jeffrey, typically, says nothing, and lets his mother talk, unheard to his deaf ears and mind.

The souls of a thousand small children rise out of artificial clouds that continue to drift from his mouth. Samantha Mulder is among them, her dark hair, her blue eyes contorted from her regular sweetness to a reproachful glare. He thinks it doesn't suit her. Her mother appears not far away, her form unwilling to collide and mesh and mold into that of her daughter's, and leave him alone. Her once-dark hair, her blue eyes. They meet his own; he holds the stare.

He doesn't hold himself accountable for Bill Mulder, and perhaps this is why his estranged wife stares so unnervingly. Another puff; a form fails to materialize, for once. He smiles.

The air is rancid. If it won't clear out, he supposes he won't make it.

The exhale. The war has only just begun; and for that he's sorry, and for a good many other things.

The updates on Agent Scully had been a special request on his part. The photo he glances at put her in about her seventh month of pregnancy – a photo that had been taken months ago. She had surely had the baby by now. He wonders what had become of it, inhaling. He wonders if she knows, or even suspects.

The exhale is long in coming.

Months later, he has his answer, in terms as ambiguous as his own; and if for no other reason, it makes him smile. The birth certificate, secreted and protected by order of the mother herself, named a Fox William Mulder as the father. It was truly beautiful. Such a contradiction. But then, Dana Scully had always been suspicious, and had learned quickly how to hone it.

She's quick. He'd always liked her. And if it was true, he supposes it makes him an unlikely grandfather to her child, through all the convoluted links connecting them so vaguely to each other. After all, who was he to pontificate over such plausibly intricate matters as these? Who was he to say definitively what her child was or was not?

No, he merely has his suspicious. These, he is allowed to have.

And, after all, for what man, far past the prime of his life, does the idea of being a grandfather not appeal?

He supposes he's growing sentimental with age. Cassandra is still screaming herself hoarse with either anger or madness; he lights up again and waves her away. She disperses. Ashes fall in her place.

His son, reportedly, had come back to life in the seventh month, and months later, was now somewhere around these miserable stomping grounds. The tale of resurrection had hardly astonished him. In fact, he waited almost amusedly for the day Mulder showed up, hearing reports of the old Indian wise man.

Well, when that day came (he had no doubt that it would, indeed, come) he would be waiting; tired and 'half-sick of shadows', as it were. Perhaps he would have news of his own son.

Children are the future of the world, after all.

He smiles in the dull glow of embers and ash and clouds of smoke that will not clear.


End file.
